28 Feb 2006

Ewa Podles in New York — Two Reviews

On 26 February, Constantine Orbelian led the Moscow Chamber Orchestra, marking its 50th anniversary this season, in works by Haydn, Prokofiev, Rossini, Shostakovich, and Mussorgsky, with the renowned contralto Ewa Podlés. Here are two reviews.

Almost Bringing the House Down With a Rarely Heard Rossini

By ANTHONY TOMMASINI [NY Times, 28 February 2006]

Ewa Podles can certainly excite an audience. When Ms. Podles, a Polish-born contralto, finished her electrifying performance of a rarely heard Rossini solo cantata, "Joan of Arc," on Sunday afternoon, people throughout Avery Fisher Hall burst into frenzied applause and lusty bravos. There was so much foot-stomping the walls seemed to shake. One feared that the scheduled gutting and renovation of the auditorium were about to get an early start.

In the 2003-04 New York season, when I heard Renee Fleming sing the "Song to the Moon" during Dvoryak's "Rusalka" at the Metropolitan Opera, the most impressive vocal effort was still the Ulrica of Ewa Podles. In a concert version of Verdi's "Un ballo in maschera," Ms. Podles reminded once again that she is actually either a creature from another planet where singing is revered as the highest art or a time traveler sent from the golden age of Ernestine Schumann-Heink. I have a good friend in the Collegiate Chorale, and she told me that Ms. Podles's entrance took them all by surprise. In an otherwise wooden ensemble performance, this larger than life superstar slithered (there is no other word for what she did) out onto the Carnegie Hall stage with a facial expression right out of D.W. Griffith. Even before she opened her mouth, she electrified the entire audience (and the singers as well, as I found out after the fact). Once she intoned her first resonating contralto note, everyone else might just as well have gone home. We only had ears for her.